


Improbably Into Forever

by misscam



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-06-06
Updated: 2007-06-06
Packaged: 2017-10-17 13:09:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/177172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misscam/pseuds/misscam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>The Doctor and Rose; a start. He never imagines an end. Forever is not an impossibility for time. It's just highly improbable.</i> [Ten/Rose]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Improbably Into Forever

**Author's Note:**

> I totally blame this fic on the heat that just struck Norway and made my brain go odd places. Vague references to events of series two, nothing particulary spoilery. Thanks to June for beta.

Improbably Into Forever  
by **misscam**

Disclaimer: BBC's characters. My words.

II

There are many ways to have foreplay. Longing glances, there's one. Inviting jealousy by flirting with others, there's another. Just flirting, there's a good one. Fighting, there's a surprisingly common one.

The Doctor just takes Rose's hands and that's it. Everything else is just afterplay.

The Doctor and Rose; a start. He never imagines an end. Forever is not an impossibility for time. It's just highly improbable.

He likes that.

 _Play it again, Doctor._

II

There are a lot of ways a first kiss can go. Awkward. Clumsily. Swoon-ily. (Is that a word?) Carefully. Guarded. Drunken-oh-bollocks-I-snogged-him?! Sober-oh-bollocks-I-snogged-him. Dreamily. Wet.

Rose Tyler has her first with the Doctor as if it wasn't a first at all.

His lips seems to know her, know she likes just a little pressure there, know how to drive her to make those little noises at the back of her neck Mickey compared to a chipmunk's, know that she likes to curl her tongue against the corner of her mouth and meet it there. A first kiss shouldn't be familiar. This is, as improbable as it sounds.

"What's this?" she asks breathlessly when he edges away slightly, because if he really meant to kiss her, why wait till now?

"Snogging," he says against her lips, breath warm and smelling faintly of coconut. "You should know it, you're human. Your snogging is practically cultural. Mona Lisa, Beethoven's Fifth and snogging. Finest humanity has to offer. Well, apart from waffles."

"Last week you humanity's finest was chips."

"That was before I had waffles," he says, kissing her again, tasting faintly of the strawberry muffin she had for breakfast.

She doesn't forget her question. She just forgets to ask it again, already suspecting the answer.

He never talks about France and she never talks about Mickey.

II

There are a lot of places Rose could imagine a seduction. Paris. Candlelight dinner of fish'n'chips. Dark cinemas with some romantic flick on. Hood of a car. Sunset over an abandoned beach.

Behind an animatronic ship on Disneyland's 'Pirates of the Caribbean' show isn't exactly one.

It doesn't help that they've dressed the part, which is why the Doctor's plastic sword is currently scratching against her side while the Doctor doesn't seem to have tired of her earlobe yet. Sometimes she thinks he whispers something, but in a language she can't understand. Maybe it's poetry to rival Byron. Maybe it's the formula to calculate the weight of the moon. If she closes her eyes, it can be anything she wants.

It feels oddly like seducing herself.

He moves his hand to her neck, and she wonders what her pulse feels like against his palm. She knows the feel of his. Impossibly loud and with a sense of hush at the same time, as if he can't make up his mind to roar at the universe or listen to it.

Not the sort of thoughts Rose Tyler would have two years ago. Everything changes. She. Him. The pirates.

The pirates.

"Doctor," she says, trying not to yelp because he's wriggled a finger inside her bra and is tracing the underside of her right breast. "We're being watched by Disney pirates."

Definitely not a seduction scenario out of the mind of Rose Tyler, and probably not Walt Disney either.

"Those aren't Disney pirates," the Doctor says, hardly looking up. "Those are aliens failing at pretend Disney pirating."

Ah.

After, an impressive narrow escape from walking the plank and saving the world from 'arr' later, he kisses her gently against a fake palm and what he doesn't say seems so very loud in her mind.

II

There are a lot of guys Rose could imagine shagging in her bed while her mother is away - Mickey, that video guy she had a crush on just when she discovered what sex was, Orlando Bloom, drunk Mickey, Mr Plastic Penis (the dildo Shareen gave her last time Mickey was a dick), Stephen from downstairs, sad-because-his-team-lost-Mickey, all members of Coldplay to mention some - but she never did quite enter the Doctor on it and he's still dived under a blanket of pink, his sideburns scratching the insides of her thighs and oh yeah, incoming shag.

Huh.

It's not that she hasn't imagined shagging the Doctor - both in this body and the previous one he had - because she has. It's hard not to when he looks human, wears leather jackets or tight suits, sweeps her up into a life more wonderful and dreadful than she could imagine, gives her a key, Looks at her and teaches her to dance with stars. But almost everything she has imagined has taken place in the settings of her new life - the TARDIS, the future, the past, alien planets or space stations.

Somehow, this is all wrong. And yet. Yet yet yet because she's biting her tongue to hard she can almost taste blood and yet yet yet because his palms are resting at her hips, steadying her and yet yet yet because she's about to be shagged by an alien and that's weird enough to cancel out normal surroundings.

He thrusts into her with what sounds like an exhale; she breathes in sharply as flesh adjusts to this new guest. He lifts his head and kisses her, and only then does she realise it's the first time he's actually done that since they got into this room.

"Rose," he breathes into her mouth, his tongue warm as it touches her lower lip. He tastes metallic, making her wonder if he's been sucking the sonic screwdriver again, and of the apple pie her mum is now not going to have for dessert.

He is a bit of a thief, really. Stealing parts of her life too, a little piece of Jackie and Mickey and normality carried around in his pocket.

Maybe that explains why here, of all places. This is probably where she'd shag normal boyfriends. This isn't where she'd shag the Doctor.

That could be the point.

"Rose? You there, love?"

She's pretty sure getting walked in on by your mother while doing horizontal pink-decorated tango with your very own alien time traveller _isn't_.

"Oh bollocks," the Doctor has time to say.

"Yes," Jackie says very calmly from the door, "and why have you taken them out for a visit to my daughter's vagina?"

II

There are a number of things Rose has done she shouldn't have. Run off with Jimmy. Dropped out of school. Coloured her hair. Stolen Jackie's purse. Changed the past.

Listening in on a conversation between her mum and the Doctor is probably one.

"She's my little girl," Jackie says, sounding broken. "You said it wasn't a sexual thing! I remember!"

"It isn't," the Doctor says, sounding defensive.

"Tell that to your dick!"

"It doesn't have ears."

"Oh, shut up," Jackie says, but for a moment, there might have been laughter in her voice. "You're going to hurt her. Can you promise me you won't? Can you?"

There is a long silence, and finally Jackie just sighs.

"Promise me something else instead, then."

"What?"

"Promise me she'll okay one day."

"She's Rose," the Doctor says, voice strangely quiet and Rose wants to smack him. "She'll be okay. I promise, Jackie."

Rose decides she'll never have to be okay and doesn't talk to her mother for a week.

II

There are a number of ways to deal with having shagged someone. You can pretend it never happened. You can get lost in it. You can move on from it. You can make a new start with it.

The Doctor doesn't do anything. He doesn't not pretend it happened - after all, he repeats the venture somewhere very-very-very-Antarctica-far from Jackie. He doesn't seem lost in it, still the Doctor, still saving the universe and breaking worlds. He doesn't seem to want to move on either, touching skin as if it's as magnificent as a star. Maybe he is starting something with it, but he starts and ends so much in the span of a heartbeat she sometimes feels dizzy.

He isn't human, she reminds herself. He shags her. He never sleeps with her. He isn't human.

He's still loved by one.

II

There are a lot of ways to say three little words. With letters. With actions. With looks. With words borrowed from others. With euphemisms.

The Doctor does it with assumptions.

He kisses her, and assumes she'll know what that means. He touches her one way when he's being gentle and one way when he's being angry, and assumes she'll tell the difference. He says her name, and assumes she'll hear more than one word. He smiles at her, and assumes her smile will reply properly back.

It's all a little maddening. Just once she wishes he'd say. Just once she wishes he wasn't sure that she knew. Just once she wishes he wasn't a fucked-up alien with bastard tendencies. Just once she wishes he would talk less and say more. Just once she wishes to hear - not to interpret.

Then he kisses her, and she lets that be a sort of compensation.

The Doctor does it with assumptions - or so she assumes.

II

There are a lot of futures. Possible futures. Dreaded futures. Past-driven future. Avoided futures. Illusions of futures. Probable futures.

When Rose was five, she would never have imagined hers being standing on a beach, strange sky overhead and strange boyfriend (maybe?) beside. But here she is, still. Wherever here is.

"I have no idea where we are!" the Doctor says brightly. He's holding her hand again, a hand he just five minutes had up her skirt. "Could be anywhere."

"A beach, anywhere," Rose says. She smiles at him. "I love it."

"Yes," he agrees.

"So where are we, probably?"

"I don't like probable. Improbable, that's much better."

Improbability and shaggability, she thinks. Yeah. That about sums it up.

"So where are we, improbably?"

He laughs, and starts to tell her a long story that is very probably not true, but could be. Anything can be, with him. She can imagine anything. It probably won't be true. All the better.

She doesn't know, can't know that one day, 'a beach, anywhere' will be a beach, Norway, and she'll be seeing its mirror in another world.

There are a lot of futures. Rose isn't seeing any. She's just seeing the present, lasting improbably into forever.

He's taught her that. He always does.

 _Play it again, Doctor._  
  
FIN


End file.
